Green Room

Obama threatens to veto CLASS Act repeal

President Obama is against repealing the health law’s long-term care CLASS Act and might veto Republican efforts to do so, an administration official tells The Hill, despite the government’s announcement Friday that the program was dead in the water.

For those who didn’t follow healthcare arcana, the CLASS Act was a long-term care program folded into ObamaCare as a sop to Sen. Ted Kennedy and to score roughly $70-80 billion in bogus deficit reduction:

Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D) called it “a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing Bernie Madoff would be proud of.” Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted it was “totally unsustainable” in its current form.

However, by collecting premiums for five years before paying any benefits, Dems got the CBO to score it as reducing deficits within the first decade of projected ObamaCare.

So why would the Obama White House threaten to veto a repeal of the CLASS Act? After all, they got the political benefit when they passed ObamaCare. The likely answer is that Obama is sending a message to Congressional Dems that they cannot afford the news coverage that: (a) part of ObamaCare has already been exposed as a Ponzi scheme; and (b) it was repealed on a bipartisan basis. That’s also behind the administration’s fairy tale about finding a way to make the CLASS Act work. The administration simply cannot afford a vote where Dems join the GOP in repealing part of his signature legislative accomplishment during Obama’s re-elect campaign. Team Obama just told Sen. Maj. Ldr. Harry Reid to block a repeal, citing the administration’s imaginary efforts to “fix” the CLASS Act as his fig leaf.